GFU04 - The Cornish Pixie Affair

by Peter Leslie

  Ernie seized her wrists and threw himself backwards, pulling her down on top of him just as her boot was slipping on the slimy weed.

  Panting, she clambered to her feet and looked around her. The cavern was immense; she couldn't estimate how far across. Forty or fifty feet above their heads, the rock strata closed in, narrowing the roof to a shaft, at the top of which, improbably, the moon rode in a patch of sky. And it was the moonlight, reflected and refracted from scores of pale out crops and veins and galleries in this dark chimney, which pierced the gloom with a thousand glittering points of light and flooded the surface of the water with its strange radiance.

  "Come on, then," Ernie Bosustow was whispering in her ear. "Let's get up them stairs! You got that flashlight?"

  April produced the powerful torch she had snatched from the table before they left the caravan and handed it over. "What about the boat?" she asked. "And why do we have to whisper?"

  "Because sound carries like mad in here and we don't know where your friends may be. Because, anyway, if we talk naturally, the echo smashes up and swells the noise so much that you can't understand a ruddy word... and as for the boat…" She saw him shrugging. "... There's nothing to be done."

  "But what did you do when you came here as kids? What did the smugglers do?"

  "Went back through the tunnel and stood off until someone signalled it was time to come in again. Or, if it was very calm, left two or three in the craft to fend off. Only other thing is to drop a sea anchor and leave her in the middle — and we don't have one aboard."

  "How deep is the water in here?"

  "They do say eighty fathoms — but nobody's ever really found out."

  "Don't you mind about the boat? I mean…"

  The boy shrugged again. "She was Harry's boat. Using her to pay off his killers seems... well... right, And if she dies in the attempt — well, again, that's better'n any other way." He switched on the flashlight.

  Lancing the gloom, the beam illuminated a circle of dark rock, dripping with bright green weed. As he jerked it sideways, the shaft lit up a narrow flight of stairs carved into the wall of the cave and spiralling upwards towards the chimney and the patch of sky above. They began to climb.

  As they rose, the torchlight moving around the walls of the cave picked out the sparkling veins of quartz and felspar and other minerals which writhed through the rock to make the pale and glittering contrasts they had observed from below.

  They had climbed perhaps forty feet, and the steps carved in the rock were no longer wet and slippery, when the hoarse booming of the swell lapping the basin below — which sounded oddly like the respiration of some great subterranean beast — was interrupted by a splintering crunch which echoed around the shaft for what seemed like minutes.

  "The boat!" April gasped. "Look!"

  On the heaving surface of the water, green in the green luminescence of the cavern, they saw the whaler being lifted and smashed against a spur of rock on the far side from the shelf where they had landed. As the water subsided, the boat half caught on the projection, hung crazily for a moment, and then plunged back into the swell with a splash, its reverberations hurting their ears. For a second longer, it remained on the surface — and then gently it tilted up on its bows and slid beneath, leaving only a single plank eddying on the pale water...

  Now they had to get out through the passageways above: their only avenue of retreat had gone!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MISS DANCER DOES THE TRICK!

  ERNIE Bosustow stopped and mopped his brow. He was panting with exertion. "I think... we'll stop here... few minutes… get my... bearings," he gasped, flopping to the ground. The torchlight showed them a widening in the tunnel almost extensive enough to be called a cave. On the far side, it branched off in three different directions — and it was floored, unbelievably, with sand.

  April lowered herself beside him. Since they had watched the whaler sink, they had climbed an interminable number of stairs, negotiated a slippery platform set at a dizzying height above the underground pool, and hurried along what seemed to her to be miles of corridors carved into the rock. They had originally been made, centuries before, as exploratory workings for a projected tin mine, the boy told her, "before they found there wasn't any, this side of the Penwith peninsula!" And the smugglers of a later day had merely made use of what was already there.

  "The thing is," Ernie said, levering himself to his feet again, "I can't remember all the ramifications by heart — 'tis too complicated. But there should ought to be like a map here somewhere. We used to copy her down each time we come, so's we didn't get lost, see."

  For a few moments he flashed the torch around — and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he loped across to the corner of one of the tunnels. Carved into the glistening rock, the striations filled in with some yellowish-white cement, there was a complicated diagram which looked something like an underground railway map of London. Clamping his tongue between his teeth, the boy produced a pencil and a scrap of paper and began to copy down part of the map.

  While she was waiting, the girl took from her bag what looked like a flesh-coloured ear plug. She pressed a minute button on the end and then inserted it into her right ear. There was about her wrist a gold charm bracelet hung with many miniatures wrought into the shapes of elephants, cameras, tennis racquets, veteran cars and bicycles — a common enough piece of costume jewellery... except that in April's case every charm was a tiny transistorized microphone, a "bug", and the "ear plug" was the complementary receiver on which she could hear anything the bug transmitted. Before succumbing to her drugged sherry in Wright's sitting room, she had managed unseen to detach one of the charms and secrete it among the foliage of a pot of azalea. She might as well — since she felt exactly like Alice down here anyway! — improve the shining hour and listen in.

  As soon as she had pressed home the plug, she sat bolt up right with an exclamation of delight. The receiver had a client! A transmission was coming in loud and clear!

  Wright was talking to his wife. They appeared to be in the middle of an argument.

  "... understand why you had to go and kill the wretched girl anyway," she said, "especially in so theatrical a way. What was the point?"

  "Tidiness, in answer to the first question. Once I discovered she was working part-time for Waverly, was in fact a double agent, I had no alternative. You don't split allegiances with THRUSH."

  "Couldn't you have kept her on, made sure she got nothing valuable from us, and milked her to gain more of their secrets?"

  "They don't give 'secrets' to part-timers. But you miss the whole point, Diana: as I've said before, the fact that she knew we were THRUSH was enough to sign her death warrant. Surely that's obvious!"

  "I suppose so. And the man, Bosustow?"

  "A wretched, rash, intruding fool, to quote the Bard. So it had to be — to quote him again — farewell. You know the little rat made his money out of a particularly slimy line in black mail?"

  "I know he had pictures of you with your doxy and tried to cash in on them, thinking an upright pillar of local society like yourself would pay anything rather than have his wife know about the affair!" There was a hint of mocking laughter in the clipped, strangulated voice.

  "He didn't understand sophisticated people." Wright dismissed the point impatiently. "The point is — once he realised I didn't mind... that you knew already and you didn't mind –– then he was too much of a danger to live. Those very facts made us 'different'... and once local people know you are different, they start to poke and pry... We couldn't afford that."

  "Even so, Gerry, I don't —"

  "Look. What do they say in the latest Council Directive — the one with the computer analogy? When you have an input channel with one component weaker than the others — rip out the whole circuit and rewire from scratch."

  "You haven't explained, still, the coconut-shy and the drowning —"

  "Oh, heavens!" Wright interrupted. "I should have thought that was c
lear enough: to throw suspicion on that tomfool yokel the girl was supposed to be engaged to, in the first place; again for tidiness in the second. Mason lured him aboard our cutter by saying he'd discovered a love nest in a cove just beyond Coverack where half the V.I.P.s for the West Country took their secretaries for weekends! Of course the little worm reached for his camera and his flashgun and came running! So far as the coconut-shy goes, I'd hit the girl with my binoculars and I had to mask the wound in case they could have been traced from it."

  There was a confused noise in the tiny receiver, ending in the clink of glass on glass. April realised that the table on which the bowl of azalea was resting had been moved and that someone was now pouring out drinks on it.

  Wright was saying something, but his words were lost in the glugging of liquid, monstrously distorted by the proximity of the glass to the microphone. Then came the voice of the chauffeur, Mason: "Boat's ready on the slip, sir, and the sub will be standing off at eleven sharp to receive us."

  "Right, Mason," the self-satisfied voice drawled. "And what about our impetuous young friend? Is he a little more subdued now?"

  The chauffeur gave a vicious chuckle. "You could say that, sir. Jacko gave him a bit of a going over... We had to — Hah! — wipe the Slate clean afterwards, if you know what I mean! "Again he uttered the short, sharp bark of laughter.

  April stiffened. Her worst fears were realised. They had got Mark — although at least it sounded as though he was still alive. But Jacko must be the giant she had injected with the knock out drops that afternoon: she shuddered to think what a "going over" from him might imply.

  "He's secure, is he, Mason?" the woman was asking.

  "Yes, madam. As secure as it's humanly possible to be."

  "Really?" She sounded mildly amused. "And how secure is that?"

  "Well, the chair he's sitting on is cemented to the rock floor, for one thing. That'll be dry now, and I'll defy anyone to move that!"

  "You could saw through the legs above the cement."

  "Not this one: it's wrought iron!"

  "Oh. Oh, that was thoughtful of you, I must say. And how is he attached to it?"

  "By wire, madam."

  "Wire?"

  "Yes, madam. Not the thin fuse-wire type. A determined man can snap that if he's strong enough and courageous enough to stand the pain. No — this is the thicker kind, the sort they use to bind fencing to its posts, or to tie up shrubs and small trees, and to do up crates. With that —"

  "But surely it's not bendy enough to tie knots in?"

  "No, it isn't. You don't tie knots: you twist it. You get a man tied to something with that wire looped around his ankles and knees and wrists, and the ends of each loop twisted automatically by a packager — just tight enough to sink into the skin — nothing on earth will free that man except by slowly and patiently untwisting the wire! With a crate, you can slip a screwdriver or a wrench between the wire and the wood — and she'll snap. But you can't do that with flesh: it's not hard enough. No more can you get a pair of wire-cutters between the bonds and the skin, if it bites in enough."

  "In other words," Wright butted in, "when the victim is thus wired to an iron chair concreted into the floor, even if rescuers arrive they can't take him away with them — not even complete with chair — until they've got a pair of pliers and untwisted the lot... Thank you, Mason. You've done well."

  "All this is very ingenious, Gerry," the woman said dubiously. "But in aid of exactly what?"

  "It all ties in with the little device we took off Slate," her husband replied. "And with my not unusable talent for mimicry. You were cross about the girl escaping; this will not only bring her back: it will effectively dispose both of her and of her partner — and by her own hand, too." He laughed pleasantly. "Another Martini, my dear?"

  The hairs on the nape of April's neck were pricking. What devilry could this mean? How was she to be brought back to the thatched house on the moors and made to kill both herself and the helpless Mark Slate?

  "When the big mast goes," the man was saying over the noise of ice in glasses, "it should fall — if our little Satrap in the station has done its homework — diagonally across the control bunker and put the whole place out of action for weeks!"

  "And the charge in the chamber where Slate is...?"

  "Lies directly under that mast. It's all very neat. As soon as I have called her, I shall set the hour glass in the chamber. The charge will go up when she opens the door — or when the sand has run out of the glass — whichever happens first. By which time, we shall be on the high seas with our final batch of photos, nice and safe and out of harm's way!"

  In the cave below the cliffs, April Dancer shivered as she heard this plot unfold. But the maddening thing was — although she had managed to eavesdrop on the whole plan, it still meant little to her; she couldn't act.

  "Now, I'll show you exactly what I mean..." Sir Gerald was saying, when suddenly the girl totally lost interest in what it was that he was about to demonstrate.

  The Communicator in her handbag was bleeping!

  Feverishly, she groped for the pen-shaped device and thumbed the switch. "Channel open," she called huskily.

  "April, sweetie — they got me!" Mark Slate's voice came strongly from the instrument. "Look, I've got to talk fast. I may have to pull out at any moment if someone comes... I'm held prisoner in an old smuggler's hide-out — an underground cave in the rock below the radar station. Here's how you find the entrance..."

  The girl listened dully. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong indeed.

  And then suddenly she had it: the voice! It was coming at her twice: she could hear Slate's voice not only from the Communicator but also through the transistorized receiver in her ear...

  In other words, it wasn't Mark's voice at all, but Wright's! This was the "talent for mimicry" of which he had spoken... and it was a talent, too! She might easily have been fooled if she hadn't known of the deception.

  The voice completed the directions and broke off. "Quick! I must go off the air now," it said. "Did you get that? Can you make it? Where are you — in the caravan?"

  "Yes... yes, in the caravan," the girl replied mechanically, her mind racing. "Hold on, Mark: I'll be there. I'll be there as soon as I can…"

  The Communicator went dead, but Wright's chuckle continued in her ear. "Right, my dear," he said. "I'm off to the chamber with the hour-glass."

  April looked up to meet the astonished gaze of Ernie Bosustow. "It's all right, Ernie," she said. "I haven't gone mad and started talking to myself! This little thing is a two way radio. Mr. Slate and I use them for talking to one another when we are apart. Wright has just tried to decoy me into coming to the house by pretending to be Mr. Slate."

  "They have captured him, then?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid they have. From what I've just heard — I left a bug in their living room, and I can hear what it transmits on this little ear plug, see? — From what I've just heard, it seems that Wright and his wife have been spying on the secret station at Trewinnock Tor, taking photographs from their house, collecting secret information from accomplices inside, and picking up gossip from everyone they meet at all the military messes they visit."

  "Cor! "Ernie said. "Who for — the Russians?"

  "No, Ernie, not the Russians. An organisation much more effective than the secret service of Russia, America or even China; an organisation called THRUSH."

  "THRUSH? I never heard of it."

  "You wouldn't have. But it's there nonetheless. A world wide syndicate of evil men with unlimited money; a collection of rogue scientists, bankers, industrialists and politicians whose aim is to rule the world. The secrets of Trewinnock Tor are small beer to them — but it all adds up... They have been receiving all the information that Wright collected on micro film — either direct negatives or photographed documents and so on. And the film was collected by couriers who called at Sheila's booth in the circus. When they asked for a certain thing —"
r />   "What thing? What did they ask for?"

  "A black Porphyry pixie, as a matter of fact."

  "A black Porphyry pixie! So that's why you asked... but, like I said, there are none. You couldn't make 'em."

  "Exactly. That was to prevent the film being given to some chance customer by mistake. Sheila didn't know who the couriers were, you see, and nobody is going to ask for a souvenir that doesn't exist by coincidence, are they?... Anyone who did enquire about a pixie in Porphyry had to be the courier. And then they were given a lighthouse in Porphyry — with a secret compartment in which the film was concealed."

  "Now it's lighthouses!" he cried, astonished. "Who made 'em, then? I didn't."

  "I know you didn't. I think we'll find one of Wright's henchmen worked in stone; there's probably a wheel some where in the house or the outbuildings."

  "Did... did Sheila know... about the films, I mean? She was in on it?"

  "I'm afraid she must have been," April said gently.

  The boy kicked savagely at the sand. "It was him!" he cried. "He talked her in to it! It's his fault!"

  "Well, let's get on and get at him. Does that map..." She paused.

  "What is it?" Bosustow asked.

  "I thought I heard voices — a long way away, but quite clear. Could I have done?"

  "Not here, not in this cave. 'Tis too far. Only place you could have heard voices from would have been the Keg-'ole itself — and I didn't notice too many sunbathers in there tonight!"

  "Oh, well... never mind. I was saying: Wright thinks I'm in my caravan. He won't expect me to arrive for sometime. But if we could suddenly appear before they expected us, we could take them by surprise... and we'd have a much better chance of overcoming them. Then we could try and rescue Mr. Slate."

  "Where've they got him, then?"

  "Apparently he's in a cave –– some kind of storeroom used by the smugglers, I gather — right under the masts of the Tor. And they're... they're going to fix some explosive booby trap that goes off as soon as the door is opened — or when the sand runs out of an hour glass, whichever happens first. So when we rescue Mr. Slate, the idea is, we blow up ourselves, him, and the station